The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for producing inexpensive disposable bouffant caps for use by hospital nurses and cooks and by women in general as shower caps.
Heretofore, such bouffant caps have been produced by circularly punching out a material such as non-woven fabric, sewing the peripheral edge of the resulting cutout together with a rubber string in stretched condition, and turning back the circumferential portion. However, the circular punching-out of a material such as non-woven fabric results in a poor yield of product, which is uneconomical. Further, since they are manually produced by workers, the production efficiency is very low and conventional bouffant caps are not suitable for mass production.
We have previously developed a method of forming such a cap from a square material without circularly punching out the material. This method comprises the steps of folding a square material in zigzags with a suitable width into a bunch form, welding rubber strings in stretched condition to the opposite outermost folds of the bunch with said rubber strings extending lengthwise of the folds, and uniting the opposite ends of the rubber strings on both sides, said bunch, when unfolded, forming a cap. However, this method, like the preceding one, is not suitable for mass production since caps have to be produced one by one from separate sheets of material.